Wow, I really like this thread because I've been where the OP is before. Years ago I had ignorant people laughing at my decision to go the Mac way but those same people now have a Mac, go figure.
Here's what the OP can tell his brother and bro's friend.
Firstly Apple puts more emphasis on what the customer "needs" which most PC companies don't do anymore. For example:
Ask your brother's friend to show you the physical restore discs that came with his HP. Most likely he can't because most PC companies place the restore image on a partition on the hard drive to save money. This is bad because the customer has to burn their own and if they don't and an issue with the computer happens there's no way to access the restore image.
Apple ships restore DVD's with all of their Macs and you can have the option of a bare bones install of OS X or the included software package. The majority of PC's don't allow you to do a bare bones install of Vista from the restore image.
Apple gives a complete software package of really great software. Vista does ship with DVD, Movie and Photo editing however there's nothing that comes close to iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and Garageband. Match your included software package with your brother's friends HP.
Someone else mentioned about Macs being able to dual boot into Windows. That's a big plus and it's fully supported and you don't have to do any hacking. Even if you don't use Windows just the fact that your Mac can dual boot Windows and can run Linux increases the value of it a lot.
The resale value is much higher for Macs than common PC machines because the fit and finish is so much better. The reason Apple's Macintosh computers look so much better than the competition is because Apple pays a lot of attention to detail. They use good quality plastics for the Macbooks and the fit and finish is much better. Your brother's friend's HP is probably worth the $750+ that he paid for it.
Yes, specs can be comparable while the PC may be cheaper but I explained above why the PC would be cheaper. Also find out if that HP has bluetooth built-in and wireless N. It may have those however I just checked HP's website and those are options that cost extra, your Macbook is already equipped with that.
See, I didn't have to mention how great the Mac OS X operating system is or say bad things about Vista because the Macbook already is worth the extra cost before taking the OS into account. However since I'm on the subject of the OS, the Macbook comes out of the box with a 64 bit version of OS X and I'll bet the HP has 32 bit Windows on it.
Hopefully this helps.
